The Senate Hearings on Immigration continued today in Belmopan. Today's testimony was all about the technical aspects of the passport system. The Committee wanted to find out if the Department's machine which prints passports is secure, or if it can be breached by tech-savy officers who know how it works.

So, they called Rodolfo Bol, the Immigration Department's Former System Manager, and current IT Manager, who has been with the department since 2004. He's in charge of the system which runs the passport machine, and the border management system, known as MIDAS. He also manages the Department's internal network which connects all offices countrywide, and the 7 Embassies in the US, the UK, and Taiwan.

The Senate Select Committee wanted him to walk them through the technology which the Department uses. But first, they had to get his response to a very serious claim which the Auditor General made against him.

In the report on passports, she accused him of actively trying to conceal data from her audit team in relation to which Immigration Officer has the access to print passports. Her exact comments are, quote,"Evidence suggested that the IT personnel or BPIS users(meaning persons who can use the passport machine)had the ability to remove the history of applicants. This was substantiated by the action of Mr. Rodolfo Bol, the System Manager, when he removed the user roles for some Users of the BPIS in an effort to conceal evidence. The inactive users were not removed from the system. He carried out this action a couple of days after the Audit team had commenced the investigation."End quote.The Senate asked him if indeed he was trying to hide anything from the Auditors:

Hon. Aldo Salazar - Chairman, Senate Select Committee"Once somebody is entered into the system, given a user role in the system, can they be deleted from the system?"

Rodolfo Bol - Former System Mgr. Immigration Dept."The user itself no, they cannot be deleted from the system."

Hon. Aldo Salazar"Okay because this is something I saw in the auditor general's report that there was much made to some extent about the fact that users were not deleted out of the system."

Rodolfo Bol"Users shouldn't be deleted from the system."

Hon. Aldo Salazar"Meaning this, if Aldo Salazar was a print operator and now I am in another section that doesn't have anything to do with passports that my user profile is still in the system."

Rodolfo Bol"Yes we keep all the users from the inception of the system. If we delete your user then we are deleting history of the user."

Hon. Aldo Salazar"You'll be able to go back and track was somebody did in the system at any given point in time?"

Rodolfo Bol"At any given point in time, yes."

Hon. Mark Lizarraga - Business Senator"But can you make a user active or inactive?"

Rodolfo Bol"Yes"

Hon. Mark Lizarraga"Did he commence this activity of changing roles or removing user roles okay or deactivating persons not a couple days after the audit team commence their investigation, in her words to conceal evidence."

Rodolfo Bol"Just again to what I said no, what users do in the system cannot be changed, so updating a role or changing a password doesn't conceal any information about what that person has been doing because it's there."

Hon. Dr. Carla Barnett - UDP Senator"What the paragraph begins with Mr. Bol is saying that IT personnel or users of the system, BPIS has the ability to remove the history of applicants and I understand that to mean the history of applicants for passports so if I go in and I apply for a passport a form is filled out and that is entered. So this is suggesting that IT personnel who would be members of your department and the BPIS users who would be the people who have the user roles on the system other than yourselves would have the ability to remove the history of applicants. Do you or anybody else who has access to users of the system have the ability to remove history of applicants that has already been entered into the system?"

Rodolfo Bol"No."

Hon. Dr. Carla Barnett"Where does that history reside?"

Rodolfo Bol"In the database."

Hon. Aldo Salazar"Evidence suggested that IT personnel or BPIS which now we are calling it the MRP, users had the ability to remove the history of applicants. This was substantiated by the action of Mr. Rodolfo Bol the system manager when he removed the user roles for some users of the BPIS in an effort to conceal evidence. For me this is a kin to criminal activity. Did she speak to you about, did she show you any evidence, did she confront you about her view that you were concealing something from her?"

Rodolfo Bol"No sir she never did approached- her team didn't approach after whatever they did, anything about this."

Hon. Aldo Salazar"Did you take upon yourself after the audit team start to ask questions about active or inactive users, did you then decide that something had to be done about this in the system? I'm trying to understand why the auditor general would say something like this."

Rodolfo Bol"What happened was that this was in 2013-2014. At the time we had only Ms. Bowen and myself and we have started working on the MIDAS installation which our boarder management system and we were overwhelmed with work, two systems, two of us everything and yes when they inform us that users are no longer working with us they would try to do multiple things. Either mark it inactive, put in no role, change password, one of the three of all of them and yes when this happened we looked on the users we had there not with the intention to conceal any information but to make it mark the correct role that user is supposed to have."